Memediggers, A Series Of Examples

A strange sign in the Shulin, in the center of the square that leads to the train station. Taken on the 20th of January 2007 with a Nikon D200 and a 18-35mm lens. Part of the CMBRT Series 1.

I have mentioned memediggers often enough really talking in detail about them. Here is a partial list that I found at one point. This list isn’t complete.

In this post, we examine the memediggers that are available. There are always new ones popping up. These sites enable users to submit links and stories, which are then voted upon by the community of users. The more stories and links are liked, the higher they move up to the front page. Getting “dugg” can generate huge amounts of traffic.

From mashable, comes a series of examples of some memediggers. This list is by no means complete, there are always new services added.

The Memediggers

Most Digg-like sites focus on finding the latest news, but the model is increasingly being applied to other media types. Some notable examples:

Digg – Arguably the first, certainly the most popular. Digg uncovers the latest tech news at a blistering speed, although some users have criticized it for being sensationalist or converging on the lowest common denominator. Digg recently added voting to the comments, too.

Reddit – Another popular destination for news. Reddit allows users to vote down as well as up, and tends to feature a broader set of stories. Nonetheless, Reddit still focuses on technology news.

ShoutWire – Very similar to Digg, but with a more stylish interface. So far it hasn’t achieved the same level of popularity as Digg and Reddit. Some users went so far as to label it a digg clone.

180° News – Memedigger for a broad range of topics. Includes the latest news on technology, sports, entertainment, business, world, society and health.

Boxxet – Although still in testing, Boxxet can be described as a series of vertical Diggs – set up your own memedigger around a topic and let others rank the items within it. A pretty interesting idea (see my Boxxet review for more).

VideoBomb – Video memedigger. VideoBomb finds the hottest videos from anywhere on the web. It’s fun to use, but it remains to be seen whether we need a “Digg for video” or if users will simply use the voting mechanisms built into “the Flickr of video”, aka YouTube.

Newsvine – Combines a memedigger with the features of a mainstream news site. Users can vote and comment on Associated Press feeds, or submit links (”seeding the vine”) and vote for them. Newsvine also allows you to write your own stories.

The “Digg Clones”

There are literally hundreds of near-identical memediggers springing up – most of them built on the open source Pligg software. Many have been criticized for failing to take the Digg idea forward, while others have applied the concept to interesting new topics. There are far too many to list here, but I’ll include a few that crossed my radar recently:

Staralicious – Memedigger for celebrity news.

StockDigg – Digg for stock trading.

iTunesLove – Memedigger for iTunes tracks.

Woomu – Another memedigger for videos. Woomu doesn’t display a thumbnail and you can’t play the videos directly on the site – VideoBomb is a lot more convincing.

Newsbump – An unabashed Digg clone. Pretty ugly, but it does have the advantage that you can view Australian, UK or US news.